More Ways to Listen

The Macaulay Library is the world’s leading scientific collection of biodiversity media, with more than 175,000 audio and 60,000 video recordings documenting the behavioral diversity of birds and other animals. The collections in our care inspire, educate, and entertain people around the globe. We provide training, expert consultation, and equipment that enable scientists, educators, and nature enthusiasts to discover and record the natural world.

Project Highlights

The Macaulay Library Archive

Mike Anderson/Cornell Lab

The Lab’s Macaulay Library is the world’s largest online archive of natural sound audio and video recordings. The collection is always growing as both amateur and professional recordists submit their media online. Researchers, educators, and anyone, anywhere can explore the online archive. Listen to recordings of a given species, watch video of captivating animal behavior. Learn how you can contribute recordings.

Expanding Awareness and Use of Special Collections

David O. Brown/ML

In partnership with individuals and institutions around the world, we are building a growing body of special sound and film collections that highlight particular strengths within our archive, and that can be explored online, including the Macaulay Library Marine Collection, the National Public Radio-National Geographic Society Radio Expeditions Sound Collection, and the Winged Migration collection in partnership with Galatee Films.

Preservation and Management of Media Specimens

Cornell Lab

We maintain the highest standards for preservation, specimen creation, editing, quality control, storage, and output. Learn more about the audio and video curatorial processes.

Sound Recording Workshops

The Lab’s Macaulay Library leads recording workshops to teach state-of-the-art techniques for recording the sounds and behavior of animals in the wild. Participants learn through daily field recording sessions, coupled with lectures and demonstrations from our skilled staff. In collaboration the Cornell Lab’s Conservation Program, we also conduct capacity-building workshops in developing nations.

Recording Equipment

Recording birds, frogs, mammals, insects, and other natural sounds can be very challenging as well as rewarding. The proper selection of field recording equipment will help you make the most out of every recording opportunity and will probably save you time and money in the long-run. The Macaulay Library’s engineering staff thoroughly test and evaluate the latest digital audio recorders to provide the reliable information you need to select a recording system.

Techniques for Audio Recording Vocalizations of Tropical Birds

Eric Liner/ML

Audio recordings of tropical birds are important tools for the study, management, and conservation of birdlife. Recording methods, equipment, and the condition of equipment can affect the accuracy and quantity of audio recordings collected. Find out more about recording techniques.

Birds of Paradise Courtship Behavior

Edwin Scholes/ML

For more than a decade, Lab scientist Edwin Scholes has used digital video to document and study the courtship behaviors of New Guinea’s birds-of-paradise (family Paradisaeidae). In collaboration with wildlife photojournalist Tim Laman, this project has grown to become the most comprehensive collection of bird-of-paradise video footage in the world. The 39 known species provide a colorful lesson in evolutionary adaptation and sexual selection.

Reproduction, Behavior, and Climate Change

In collaboration with researchers at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, we are investigating how bird behavior may change in response to climate change. We study Black-throated Blue Warblers to understand how changes in weather and food abundance affect reproductive hormones, behavior, and the species’ long-term health. We also use recordings from our Macaulay Library to examine how song differences between populations may lead to splitting this species in two.

Sexual Signals in Australian Fairywrens

Mike Webster, director of the Macaulay Library, studies the evolution of sexual signals in Australian fairywrens. The goal is to reveal how social and ecological environments interact to produce the plumage males display during breeding and how this indicates his health and condition. Other studies examine the role of song in fairywren mating behavior as well as the evolutionary forces that lead to divergence in sexual signals which may in turn spur the development of new species.

Research Using Sound and Video from the Macaulay Library

Susan Spear/Cornell Lab

Each year, dozens of scientists around the world use Macaulay Library recordings for a wide range of fascinating research projects. (See the growing list of scientific publications dating from the 1950s to the present.) For example, Nathalie Seddon and Joe Tobias (Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology) are examining the evolution of social signals and their role in speciation. Jordan Price (St. Mary’s College of Maryland) is studying the evolution of song among female birds. Anthropologist Jonathan D. Amith (Yale University) uses sounds from the Macaulay Library to elicit Nahuatl names and information about bird species from native peoples to create an online encyclopedia of language, flora, fauna, and other aspects of Nahuatl culture.

Recordings Help Endangered Bermuda Petrels

For nearly three centuries, Bermuda Petrels (Pterodroma cahow) were believed to be extinct. In 1951, this endangered species was rediscovered, and conservation efforts continue today. To help draw displaced or prospecting pairs to new nesting burrows on higher and safer ground, the restoration team used recordings of Bermuda Petrel vocalizations from the Macaulay Library to attract courting birds.

Audio Guides

Cornell Lab

Macaulay Library staff have selected the best recordings of particular species or regions of interest to produce audio guides for birders, scientists, and nature lovers. You can purchase our most popular animal sound collections and audio field guide CDs online through the Lab of Ornithology store or Amazon. You can also download these collections or even individual tracks at the Apple iTunes Store (search for “Cornell Lab of Ornithology”).

“What is Missing?” A Multimedia Exhibit by Artist Maya Lin

The Macaulay Library provided numerous sounds and videos that enabled world renowned artist Maya Lin to create a one-of-a-kind multimedia experience. Called What is Missing, this effort raises awareness of the global extinction crisis.

Movies and Media

Minh Nguyen/GBBC

If you’ve heard a strange, prehistoric cry from the mythical phoenix Fawkes in the Warner Brothers movie Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, or European bird songs in Pixar’s animated film Ratatouille, or animal sounds while your toddler watches “Go Diego Go!” on Nickelodeon, then you have heard a small sample from the Macaulay Library’s archive. Macaulay recordings are used frequently for media productions; recent examples include NPR’s Wild Sounds series and BirdNote from Seattle Audubon. Filmmaker Ken Burns says, “We wanted our film, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, to sound as authentic and as beautiful as it looked, so we turned to the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. In terms of getting the bird sounds, that was our ‘best idea.’”